Host city's success, through and through

August 12, 2012|By Philip Hersh, Tribune Olympic Bureau

Fireworks explode over the stadium during the closing ceremony. (Mike Hewitt/Getty Photo)

LONDON — In summing up London 2012, the temptation is to deliver a panegyric. Such a discourse, filled with lofty expressions of praise, would reflect the ancient roots of the 17-day festival that ended here Sunday. The praise also would reflect accurately how London performed in its third go-around as an Olympic Summer Games host.

"Everyone here has had an absolutely amazing time," U.S. swimmer Missy Franklin said.

There is no need to temper that observation with the caveat that anyone who won four titles and five total medals and set two world records is likely to have a rather golden perspective on the Olympic kaleidoscope. No matter who looks at them or how one looks, the London Olympics fit Franklin's description.

"London has absolutely refreshed the Games in many aspects," International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said.

The organizers had the brilliant idea to turn sights into sites, using some of London's iconic buildings and royal parks for sports competition on stages unique in Olympic history. They merged sport completely into the city.

Athletes in traditional sports settings performed brilliantly. Sprinter Usain Bolt and swimmer Michael Phelps were the surpassing stars for the second straight Olympics, and the home team echoed an underlying theme by exceeding expectations.

Brits no longer have an empire on which the sun never sets. But they managed to keep it shining on these Olympics most of the time after having endured months of ceaseless rain. God apparently was interested in saving more than the Queen, who made a sky diving entry to the opening ceremony.

(No, that wasn't Elizabeth II in a parachute. But it was she in the video skit leading up to it, and that also was amazing.)

"These were happy and glorious Games," Rogge said just before declaring them closed.

That the Queen had been a good sport set a tone. During the 40th anniversary year of Title IX, in the first Olympics where all 204 nations had at least one female athlete, in a country with a female monarch, women also ruled on the fields, pools and courts and seized on each other's success.

"As a woman who has a mandate to promote gender equality in sports, we are very pleased and happy for them," Jamaican runner Veronica Campbell-Brown said of the U.S. women who had easily outdistanced both her team and the 27-year-old world record in the 400-meter relay. "Everyone talks about Bolt. Now we can talk about ladies."

That the United States led the world in both gold (46) and total medals (104) owed significantly to its women, who won 63 percent of the country's golds and 56 percent of its total. No. 2 China got 53 percent of its 38 golds and 56 percent of its 87 total from its women.

The IOC worked very hard to get three holdout nations, Qatar, Brunei and Saudi Arabia, to include women for the first time. The remaining question is whether those countries will go beyond their token representation here to expand domestic sports programs for women.

"We are going to try to find strategies to improve the situation," Rogge said. "It will take time. This is work for a decade at least to find major improvements. I think the participation here opened the door for more."

That the London organizing committee chair, Sebastian Coe, is a distinguished Olympic champion made his promise that these would be an athletes' Games seem more like the standard rhetoric from cities who bid to host. It was a promise fulfilled.

"It was a dream for a sports lover like me," Rogge said.

For the seven years after the IOC chose London, its residents expected a nightmare of transportation snafus, armed camp security, a recession made worse by Olympic cost overruns. What they got was the opposite, plus a different view of themselves through British athletes who now come from far more places than the playing fields of Eton.

"This has been a superb experience for all involved," said Scott Blackmun, chief executive of the U.S Olympic Committee. "Some of the people most surprised about that are the Brits themselves."

Britain's national record medal haul provoked a jingoism so overwhelming the public address announcers at the track competition in Olympic Stadium felt compelled to keep the crowd updated on British contenders elsewhere. "Jess is us. Jess is Jerusalem," an overwrought Times of London columnist said of mixed race heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis.

Yet that British pride also provoked the most beautifully overwhelming reaction of the Olympics, the ear-ringing roar that accompanied Mo Farah down the stretch of his victories in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters.

Farah's triumphs moved Coe, two-time Olympic champion in the 1,500, to call the Somali immigrant "the greatest runner we have produced."